I’m sure all of us have daydreamed about winning the lottery, right? Even though I am convinced that the lottery is just an ingenious scheme to put an additional tax on the great unwashed masses while at the same time giving them the illusion of being able to escape their squalor, I still buy a ticket once in a while. The reasoning behind that decision is that, even though I know the statistics are against me, I feel like I have to give luck a chance to strike. I can’t complain about never winning the lottery if I don’t play in the first place.

It is important to not make gambling your primary investment vehicle though. I’ve seen little old, poor looking ladies spend what seemed like their whole disposable income on lottery scratch tickets, and stuff like that just breaks my heart. But spending $10 or something a month on things like that is perfectly fine in my book.

Here in Europe there is a continent-wide lottery game, where recently there was a 100 million Euro jackpot. I have to be honest, I wouldn’t know what to do with that kind of money. Although it’d certainly qualify as a problem everybody would like to have, having a windfall of that magnitude would probably totally disrupt your life.

You’d probably have to keep really quiet about it. In our case, I’m sure you guys would notice though, because there would suddenly be a Chicken Wings animated TV series! And in Chuck’s case, I guess Julio would suddenly find a complete Corsair in the hangar …

Leaving all reasonable investments aside, what would be the most ridiculous or extravagant purchase you would make if you suddenly had a hundred million Euros or Dollars?

I have a very rare surname. About 25 years ago, a man sharing my Christian and surnames won forty million dollars in the city I was then living. He was, as they say, “of no fixed abode”; I was in the phone book…

It would probably be humorous to any detached observer, but I didn’t find it so.

Man the possibilities are endless. My own airplane would have to be on the top of the list, of course, but I would also get certified for skydiving. I’d travel the world flying and skydiving in different countries. One can only dream…

A lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. The scheme survives for the same reason I used to take several paycheques home on the 1st and 15th while I was in the Air Force – more optimists than mathematicians play poker…

My sister’s boyfriend’s uncle actually won the lottery. Somewhere close to a hundred million I think, but he took a lump sum and therefore only got 10-20% of the total. He keeps to himself and doesn’t “spread the wealth,” but they aren’t the kind of people that would want to live on someone elses’ success.

The lottery is the biggest scam/pyramid scheme that mobsters and crooks could only dream of, but somehow is legal for governments to run.

Actually, I *did* win the lottery once! (Okay, it was only $1K on a scratch-off ticket; but still…) Unfortunately I had to use most of it to pay things like food and rent, but I did manage to be able afford a good used typewriter that I wanted. (This was during the pre-computer days of my wasted youth.)